Think About It: Liberty or Equality

This post will make you think .. and if it is too much for your busy day, bookmark this so you can get back to this late some night or early in the morning when the world is a little more still.

Based on a brilliant 1952 work ( “Liberty or Equality the Challenge of Our Time”) by EvKL ( Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn ), this Mises resource is utilized by Bionic Mosquito to unpack thee insights that measure liberty and equality in light of early century’s as well as the last few century’s experiences.

In this treatise, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn argues that it reduced to one simple and very dangerous idea: equality of political power as embodied in democracy.

He marshals the strongest possible case that democratic equality is the very basis not of liberty, as is commonly believed, but the total state. He uses national socialism as his prime example. He further argues the old notion of government by law is upheld in old monarchies, restrained by a noble elite. Aristocracy, not democracy, gave us liberty. On his side in this argument, he includes the whole of the old liberal tradition, and offers overwhelming evidence for his case. In our times, war and totalitarianism do indeed sail under the democratic flag…

Bionic Mosquito’s article does a good job of summarizing this work so please pay this site a visit for some deeper digging. What I hope to do is merely tease you with some truth and let you do with it as you may.

As Dostoyevski writes in The Possessed:

“Shigalyov is a man of genius. He has discovered “equality.” He has it all so beautifully written down in his copy-book. He believes in espionage. He wants the members of society to control each other and be in duty bound to denounce their neighbours. Everybody belongs to all and all belong to each single one. All are slaves and equals in slavery. As a final resort there will be calumny and murder; but the most important thing remains equality.”

If equality is the objective, which task is easier – and certainly more likely: turn all men into Jesus Christ, or turn all men into the devil?

So the title of Bionic Mosquito’s post, “The Words of the Prophets” must refer to a Simon and Garfunkel song ‘The Sound of Silence” as a challenge to listen to the marginalized or ignored members of society .. (partial lyrics follow) .. or from the “Bible” in the book of ‘Daniel’ chapter 5 .. or BOTH .. your call!

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls”
And whispered in the sounds of silence
Daniel chapter 5 in the paraphrase called “The Message”:

King Belshazzar held a great feast for his one thousand nobles. The wine flowed freely. Belshazzar, heady with the wine, ordered that the gold and silver chalices his father Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from God’s Temple of Jerusalem be brought in so that he and his nobles, his wives and concubines, could drink from them. When the gold and silver chalices were brought in, the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank wine from them. They drank the wine and drunkenly praised their gods made of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.

At that very moment, the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the lamp-illumined, whitewashed wall of the palace. When the king saw the disembodied hand writing away, he went white as a ghost, scared out of his wits. His legs went limp and his knees knocked. He yelled out for the enchanters, the fortunetellers, and the diviners to come…

One after the other they tried, but could make no sense of it. They could neither read what was written nor interpret it to the king. So now the king was really frightened. All the blood drained from his face. The nobles were in a panic…

The queen heard of the hysteria among the king and his nobles and came to the banquet hall. She said, “Long live the king! Don’t be upset. Don’t sit around looking like ghosts. There is a man in your kingdom who is full of the divine Holy Spirit. During your father’s time he was well known for his intellectual brilliance and spiritual wisdom. He was so good that your father, King Nebuchadnezzar, made him the head of all the magicians, enchanters, fortunetellers, and diviners. There was no one quite like him. He could do anything—interpret dreams, solve mysteries, explain puzzles. His name is Daniel, but he was renamed Belteshazzar by the king. Have Daniel called in. He’ll tell you what is going on here.” ..

So all the intellectuals, the court jesters, the main stream media of the day, government officials, deep state testifiers, etc. had nothing to give the king.

.. So Daniel was called in. The king asked him, “Are you the Daniel who was one of the Jewish exiles my father brought here from Judah? I’ve heard about you—that you’re full of the Holy Spirit, that you’ve got a brilliant mind, that you are incredibly wise. The wise men and enchanters were brought in here to read this writing on the wall and interpret it for me. They couldn’t figure it out—not a word, not a syllable. But I’ve heard that you interpret dreams and solve mysteries. So—if you can read the writing and interpret it for me, you’ll be rich and famous—a purple robe, the great gold chain around your neck—and third-in-command in the kingdom.”

Daniel answered the king, “You can keep your gifts, or give them to someone else. But I will read the writing for the king and tell him what it means…

.. you treat with contempt the living God who holds your entire life from birth to death in his hand.

Some serious telling of truth to power right there. This king could have had Daniel killed on the spot.

“God sent the hand that wrote on the wall, and this is what is written: mene, teqel, and peres. This is what the words mean:

“Mene: God has numbered the days of your rule and they don’t add up.

“Teqel: You have been weighed on the scales and you don’t weigh much.

“Peres: Your kingdom has been divided up and handed over to the Medes and Persians.” ..

That same night the Babylonian king Belshazzar was murdered. Darius the Mede was sixty-two years old when he succeeded him as king.

So as you search for truth in high and official places, know that sometimes it is the marginalized and obscure in this world that actually have a better handle on an unpopular truth.

Remember:

Savvy?

SF1

So About ISIS … Rebuilding/Refinancing for Another Mission (for US/Israel/Saudi)

Y’all should bookmark this .. Airwars provides data on our (US’s) efforts in the Middle East .. a watchdog of sorts. You (US taxpayer) should know how your money is being spent (for freedom) and what the CIA/military you support is up to. No GAO report is going to show you this. Treat this like an insider’s guide for investors of our government’s expeditions in foreign lands.

Again, Moon of Alabama gives us some insight into the latest trend that US foreign policy is enabling .. the revamping of ISIS toward a new mission:

Since November 2017 the U.S. largely stopped the fight against ISIS in north-east Syria. It gave ISIS the chance to regain power. A new report to the UN Security Council now confirms that ISIS in north-east Syria recuperated. It again profits from oil extraction under the nose of U.S. forces…

Good to know right? You have to wonder with all the Russia and China demon-ization, the new tariffs and sanctions, there has to be another region that could use US-generated de-stabilization.  She (US) ain’t your momma’s “shining city on a hill”, which was a myth even back in the day.

Under the nose of more than 2,000 U.S. forces in north-east Syria ISIS recuperated and again gained force. It is still able to pump oil from the ground and sell it into the local market…

Yes, we do have troops “on-the-ground” in Syria (uninvited) and are fighting ISIS (officially) but in reality, this whole ISIS thing is smoke and mirrors. These are not religious zealots but the band the US/Israel/Saudi Arabia use toward keeping other powers contained and weak.

Millions of dollars per month are generated for ISIS use, and yet:

Oil extraction can certainly be seen by surveillance drones of which the U.S. flies plenty in the Syrian airspace. But there is not one report of an airstrike against oil related targets in the U.S. military reports collected by Airwars for April, May or June 2018.

This scenario has happened before and it was Putin that called this out in a G20 summit:

During the ISIS occupation of eastern Syria in 2014 and 2015 oil extraction and its sale to Turkey was ISIS’ main financial resource. But the U.S., despite declaring a grand coalition against ISIS, never made the lucrative ISIS oil operations a target. Only when Russia’s President Putin showed aerial pictures of thousands of oil tankers, waiting in the desert to load ISIS oil, to his colleagues at the G20 summit in Turkey, was U.S. President Obama shamed into attacking them.

So what are you going to do with this nugget of truth? Are you going to continue pledging allegiance to the flag of our government? Going to continue to disrespect those who use their freedoms to take a knee (for whatever reason) when the red-white-blue flag of the American Empire is raised? Common, the only reason you can honestly excuse these actions is due to your cognitive dissonance .. that once you accept this as fact it starts spiraling out of control as you unpack more and more immoral and war criminal actions your tax dollars have enabled.

Stop being passive, start researching and then dialog with friends about this bully .. you don’t put up with bully actions in school or on social media BUT you put up with the world’s bully-state droning school buses and supporting sanctions that killed 500,000 innocent Iraqi children in the 1990s ..

Think for yourself, don’t take my word OR MSM/government’s word on anything! Get out there and do some research friend!

 

While Talking About Lies to Start Wars, What About Lies to End Them?

While I won’t even discuss the fact that the surrender Japan offered in May/June 1945 was identical to the surrender Japan was given AFTER the atomic bombs were dropped on civilian (not military) targets, it is what the public believed in August 1945 that ticks me off the most, that 85% approved the use of atomic weapons by Truman at that point in time. The wartime propaganda was most effective that is for sure, and truth had long been the first causality of that war from the outset.

While the support for these two atomic bombs has fallen to slightly less than the majority in recent years, a 2015 study showed:

… a clear majority of Americans would approve of using nuclear weapons first against the civilian population of a nonnuclear-armed adversary, even killing 2 million Iranian civilians, if they believed that such use would save the lives of 20,000 U.S. soldiers…

So human nature has changed very little indeed as once we are told another people group, defined by lines on a map, are bad .. we are quick to slaughter these people based on what the government/media has told us. Mark Twain said it best when he said:

Consider the thoughts that the military commanders of the day, who were either ready to retire or had retired had to say on the events 73 years ago this month:

Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

Dwight Eisenhower, “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”

President Truman’s Chief of Staff, Adm. William Leahy, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

So government lies to get us into wars, lies to get us out of the wars and then lies to keep their narrative intact for as long as they control the history books. We need a counter balance to this onslaught of fake news that has been around for hundreds of years, we need researchers to go to the source material to unpack the truth.

Along these lines, could Truman have been lied to as well? You might want to consider this quote:

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..”(President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

In fact, Hiroshima in 1945 had 350,000 people and was a city that had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets!

So in effect, the US “stalled” Japan’s surrender for months demanding “unconditional surrender”. Was this so the atomic bomb testing could still be achieved? Unconditional surrender meant to the Japanese was that the emperor, regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendant of the goddess of the sun would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.

In hindsight, it was not the United States’ intention to dethrone or punish the emperor but this implicit modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the Japanese. In the end after Nagasaki, Washington DC acceded to the Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as emperor.

Could “miscommunication” have cost 200,000 people and hundreds of thousands more radiation poisoning effects for life? The US has NEVER apologized for the dropping of these two lethal bombs.

Yet Another War Fought by Another Generation of Americans – For WHAT?

As a kid who grew up hearing the lyrics of “War” by Edwin Starr:

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing ..

Oh, war, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives ..
.. and I still volunteered to join the US Navy in 1976 after the Vietnam War, thinking this country learned from that experience that was based on the lie of “Gulf of Tonkin” incident. Only later, after Gulf War II did I learn that not only Vietnam was based on a lie, but so too was the UN Korean conflict that the US joined, as well as the “surprise” (lie) attack on Pearl Harbor that had this country join in WWII .. as well as the sinking of the “civilian” (lie) ship Lusitania prompting the US to join in WWI. I knew that the Spanish-American War was based on a lie (USS Maine blown up in Havana, Cuba was NOT accomplished by the Spanish) .. but the further I go back the more I understand that truth is the first thing sacrificed with nation’s politicians consider war. So it is past time to evaluate the 17 year war in Afghanistan, as another generation of kids continue the fight there.
As a father, I was late in advising my own boys as to the nature of war, the American Empire and the way this country has been using new generations of our kids as cannon fodder through the decades going back several centuries. I am blessed that my kids were more wise than I was especially after Gulf War II was launched. I am hopeful that my writings today help their kids critically think through these things before they consider joining OR being drafted into the American Empire’s military.
Here is a veteran’s take ( excerpt and book ) on the Afghanistan War. The Moon of Alabama led me to this resource. I will use some of their dialog to reflect on this war in the context of all the other’s this nation has initiated since Moon of Alabama actually goes BEYOND what this book does and gets to the root of the issue.

The piece includes remarkably strong words about the strategic (in)abilities of U.S. politicians, high ranking officers and pundits:

On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action.

That description is right but it does not touche the underlying causes…

Underlying causes? Go on sir, set the all important context to what many writers state as mean fact without doing more homework:

… The main military outpost in the valley was build on a former sawmill. Chivers writes:

On a social level, it could not have been much worse. It was an unforced error of occupation, a set of foreign military bunkers built on the grounds of a sawmill and lumber yard formerly operated by Haji Mateen, a local timber baron…

What is missing here is WHY this sawmill was abandoned:

Ten years ago a piece by Elizabeth Rubin touched on this:

As the Afghans tell the story, from the moment the Americans arrived in 2001, the Pech Valley timber lords and warlords had their ear. Early on, they led the Americans to drop bombs on the mansion of their biggest rival — Haji Matin. The air strikes killed several members of his family, according to local residents, and the Americans arrested others and sent them to the prison at Bagram Air Base. The Pech Valley fighters working alongside the Americans then pillaged the mansion. And that was that. Haji Matin, already deeply religious, became ideological and joined with Abu Ikhlas, a local Arab linked to the foreign jihadis…

S**T .. so this effort in Afghanistan is built on past military mistakes (but not in their eyes because continuous war means missions and money .. but I digress)

The U.S. special forces lacked any knowledge of the local society. But even worse was that they lacked the curiosity to research and investigate the social terrain. They simply trusted their new ‘friend’, the smooth talking Pashtun timber baron, and called in jets to destroy his competitor’s sawmill and home. This started a local war of attrition which defeated the U.S. military. In 2010 the U.S. military, having achieved nothing, retreated from Korengal..

Does this not sounds like Vietnam? Fighting for the same hill time after time while trying to “save democracy”? This is as bad as Abraham Lincoln’s “save the Union” bulls**t .. and if you still think he is “honest”, you have some research to do. The “Union” post 1865 was nothing like pre-1861 .. and this country post 1787 (Constitution replaces the Article of Confederation) is nothing like pre-1787. In fact, post Revolutionary War politics kept much of the previous pre-1776 politics with just a flag change when it was all said and done. Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion found this out the hard way.

Back to Afghanistan, as Moon of Alabama concludes:

… Back to Chivers’ otherwise well written piece. He looks at the results two recent (and ongoing) U.S. wars:

The governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, each of which the United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build and support, are fragile, brutal and uncertain. The nations they struggle to rule harbor large contingents of irregular fighters and terrorists who have been hardened and made savvy, trained by the experience of fighting the American military machine.
…
Billions of dollars spent creating security partners also deputized pedophiles, torturers and thieves. National police or army units that the Pentagon proclaimed essential to their countries’ futures have disbanded. The Islamic State has sponsored or encouraged terrorist attacks across much of the world — exactly the species of crime the global “war on terror” was supposed to prevent.

The wars fail because they no reasonable strategic aim or achievable purpose. They are planned by incompetent people…

Incompetent people (generals, deep state and politicians) leading ignorant people (who believe themselves to be patriots who will reserve our freedoms) to death, brokenness (PTSD, etc.) and abuse (at the hands of the VA).

.. The U.S. population and its ‘leaders’ simply know too little about the world to prevail in an international military campaign. They lack curiosity. The origin of the Korengal failure is a good example for that.

U.S. wars are rackets, run on the back of lowly soldiers and foreign civil populations. They enriche few at the cost of everyone else.

Wars should not be ‘a presumed government action’, but the last resort to defend ones country…

Amen.

SF1

August 10, 1780 – British Lt. Gen. Lord Cornwallis Leaves Charleston for South Carolina Interior

Francis Marion’s area of Operations August 1780

2nd Regiment of the South Carolina militia

As a follow-up to my earlier post: http://seekingliberty.org/2018/07/26/july-1780-continentals-attempt-quick-victory-against-british-in-south-carolina/

… August 1780 is a very busy and transitional month in the colony of South Carolina:

10AUG1780: While the British make their way into the interior of this colony, Gov. John Rutledge authorizes Francis Marion to take command of the militia east of the Santee River. So the question now is, does Francis Marion become a Colonel of the militia or is he still a Lt. Col. in the Continental organization?

12AUG1780: Lord Cornwallis’ forces cross the Santee at Nelson’s Ferry and arrive at Camden on the 13th of August making quick work at moving inland with no real resistance.

15AUG1780: Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates storms into South Carolina and orders Francis Marion and his men to seize all the boats along the Santee River. This group of militia then moves away from the Continental Army north of Camden (Rugeley’s Mill) to the west side of Camden opposite the British army on the other side of the Wateree River.  The next day’s events would unfold without the aid of any South Carolina militia groups as Gates and the Continentals think they have this under control.

Stay tuned .. 16AUG1780 is a day that will set the tone for the rest of this war.